ISO PM software for managing many complex plant designs

[caper656]

Hello everyone, 20 year ME/PM background in oil/gas where I've been only exposed to a couple canned project management tools, homemade excel based scheduling tools and failed attempts at MS project. We have a robust erp system with accurate labor hour buckets for manufacturing and currently looking into SolidWorks managed to handle all of our engineering task organization. One of the other primary issues is that I do not have quote unquote work orders signals to start activity. Of course we can use MS project and look what's due this week and assign it by email but I'm really hoping there's something I can bye to integrate SolidWorks and erp and manufacturing

Recently mt company has decided to rapidly expand to handle 20-30 multiple million dollar engineering process plants with so many chicken vs the egg task that are not linear and circle back and forth making ms project too cumbersome even though we have attempted to integrate MS project in a master file that blends all of the individual MS project but is way to cumbersome. Easy Examples of problems are the almost never ending cycles of bid quote conditioning due to tight RTS, COVID manufacturer leadtimes lingering, etc. I'm almost seeing a 45 % utilization rate of my process engineers and the rest is daily fires via email triggers.....at this point I don't even want to include manufacturer capacity scheduling, just upfront engring, deadlines, etc.if task can be linked to match capacity planning but easy to drag and move task around and it auto repopulate trajectory, this is what I think is ideal ...

Can anyone point me in the direction of what has worked for you that my project managers can spend maybe Monday reorganizing/prioritizing and then let the workers work that plan on say a 14 day basis?

...Primavera P6?

Help! And thanks in advance

 

[CWB1]

A software change isn't going to resolve the process issues mentioned. Most every PM software including Project can automatically email "work orders" to launch scheduled tasks and notify supervisors if progress/completion isn't input by the worker bees within X days/hours. The bigger issue is low utilization of the engineers. If email is directing half of their daily workload rather than a Gantt chart they helped create then tasks aren't likely to be prioritized correctly or efficiently completed.

I would recommend a two-step approach:
1. Have a meeting and emphasize that every engineer will be held accountable for completing tasks on-schedule, and that unplanned tasks should be forwarded to the appropriate PM for planning.
2. Hire an experienced PM who can take charge, efficiently organize/plan the workload, and keep the people/schedule on-track.